Real Estate and Sustainable Crisis Management in Urban Environments

Saija Toivonen works as an assistant professor in Future Real Estate at the Department of Built Environment at Aalto University, Finland with a wide range of topics concerning the future real estate market environment. Her special interest is combining the future dimension into real estate market research, and she has been applying methods of futures studies in real estate and built environment context for nearly 20 years. Her research scope includes themes such as the future development of space- and land-related preferences, and the different forces of change including both megatrends, weak signals and wild cards, and the resulting real estate market dynamics. Her studies are aiming to develop solutions and strategies towards a more future conscious, sustainable and resilient real estate sector. Toivonen acts also as the Chair of The Finnish Association for Real Estate Valuation and as a board member of the Property Valuation Board of the Finland Chamber of Commerce which supervises the performance of authorized real estate appraisers in Finland. Saija is the consortium leader of the research project RESCUE and leads the work package which focuses on crisis identification and analysing their direct and indirect impacts.

Professor Emerita Sirkka Heinonen has been with Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC), University of Turku as professor of Futures Studies since 2007. Previously she was Chief Research Scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland since 1979. She holds a PhD degree from Helsinki University, with 40 years of research and teaching experience in futures studies, especially technology foresight and innovations, urban and rural futures, sustainable information society, media and journalism, and renewable energy and lifestyles. She is a Member of the Club of Rome (2005-), Co-Chair of the Helsinki Node of the Millennium Project (2001-), Guest Professor at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC 2013-), Member of the Academy of Technical Sciences (2014-), and President (2012-2015), Vice-President (2016-) and Honorary Member (2020-) of the Finnish Society for Futures Studies. She is also a member of the board of editors for six scientific journals. She is member of the Chilean Council of Foresight and Strategy, and in the Philippine Futures Thinking Society. She has developed specific futures methodologies/processes such as Futures Clinique, Creative Foresight Space, Pioneer Analysis.

Ira Verma (D.Sc. in Architecture) Senior Scientist, works in the RESCUE project in a work package focusing on how crises related to the built environment affect the social sustainability and wellbeing of people. The objective is to gain further understanding for improving community resilience. She has nearly 20 years of work experience of research and project management in the Research Group for Health and Wellbeing Architecture, SOTERA, at the Department of Architecture, Aalto University. She has been involved in various national and international projects related to housing for older people, user-centred design and Universal Design. Her doctoral dissertation was on these topics (Verma, I. 2019. Housing design for all? The challenges of ageing in urban planning and housing design - The case of Helsinki).

Raul Castano is postdoctoral researcher in affordable and resilient housing at Tampere University and works on providing a better understanding on the key conditions to develop a more sustainable, affordable and resilient built environment through a human-centric approach. A major component of his work - and contribution to the field - has been to develop a novel model to assess the level of energy vulnerability (energy poverty) in residential buildings, supporting decision making toward a more sustainable, resilient, and affordable housing. Raul is also actively involved in the ECIU University at the European level as Research Field Coordinator of the Resilient Communities of practices.

Sara Wilkinson is a chartered building surveyor and Australia's first female professor of property. Her transdisciplinary research program sits at the intersection of sustainability, urban development and transformation, with a focus on green cities and preparing our urban environments for the challenges of climate change and resilience. Current projects include development of a STAR (Sustainable Temporary Adaptive Reuse) Toolkit, a Bushfire Retrofit Housing Toolkit for older Australians, and the performance evaluation of hempcrete wall panels. Sara engages in trans-disciplinary research with colleagues from engineering, science, health, and business as well as built environment disciplines.